SAUDI GOVERNMENT TO SUE TWITTER USERS: Who Compare Their Death Penalty Policy to…

Saudi Arabia says it will sue any Twitter user that compares the country’s decision to sentence a Palestinian poet to death to the punishment meted out by Islamic State. Ashraf Fayadh was given a death sentence after renouncing his faith.

The Saudi authorities’ decision caused uproar and was condemned by human rights organizations. One Twitter user took to the social platform to compare Saudi Arabia to Islamic State, a move that has not gone down well with the Kingdom.

“The Justice Ministry will sue the person who described … the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being `ISIS-like’,”said the Al-Riyadh newspaper, quoting a source in the Justice Ministry, as cited by Reuters.

The Twitter user at the center of the storm has not been identified, while the possible sentence he or she may face has not been revealed.

“Questioning the fairness of the courts is to question the justice of the Kingdom and its judicial system based on Islamic law, which guarantees rights and ensures human dignity,” the Al-Riyadh publication quoted the Justice Ministry source as saying. The ministry would not hesitate to put on trial “any media that slandered the religious judiciary of the Kingdom,” it said.

Poet Ashraf Fayadh was detained in Abha, southwest Saudi Arabia, in 2013 due to allegations by a prosecution witness, who claimed he heard Fayadh cursing God, the Prophet Mohammed and Saudi Arabia. Also, the prosecution alleged offenses based on a book of poems Fayadh had written several years prior to that.

He was subsequently sentenced to death by a Saudi court, which had initially sentenced him to four years in prison and 800 lashes after a verdict in 2014.